How To Meditate When You're Freaking Out | Kaira Jewel Lingo

What to do when you're in the grip of grief, anxiety, or overwhelm. Our Teacher of the Month, Kaira Jewel Lingo, has some suggestions for finding your way through. Join Dan's online community here http://www.danharris.com/ Follow Dan on social: Instagram https://bit.ly/3tGigG5, TikTok https://bit.ly/3FOA84J Subscribe to our YouTube Channel https://bit.ly/3FybRzD On Sunday, September 21st from 1-5pm ET, join Dan and Leslie Booker at the New York Insight Meditation Center in NYC as they lead a workshop titled, "Heavily Meditated – The Dharma of Depression + Anxiety." This event is both in-person and online. Sign up here https://www.nyimc.org/event/heavily-meditated/! Get ready for another Meditation Party at Omega Institute! This in-person workshop brings together Dan with his friends and meditation teachers, Sebene Selassie, Jeff Warren, and for the first time, Ofosu Jones-Quartey. The event runs October 24th-26th. Sign up and learn more at eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025 http://eomega.org/workshops/meditation-party-2025. To advertise on the show, contact [email protected] or visit https://advertising.libsyn.com/10HappierwithDanHarris

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Dan Harris?

  This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.

• 0:19Dan Harris?

  Happy Sunday, everybody. Hope you're having a good weekend. Welcome back to our Sunday installment with our Teacher of the Month. This month, it's Kaira Juulingo. Today, she's going to tackle a question I get a lot, both when I'm giving speeches and when I'm looking at your comments online. And the question is, how do I meditate when I'm in the midst of like a really powerful, difficult emotion, anxiety, grief, you name it. Kaira has some really practical, very, very helpful thoughts on this question. So you're going to hear that in this brief episode. Before we dive in, I just want to remind you that Kaira has been our Teacher of the Month in August, which means that she's creating customized guided meditations that go with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes. The idea, as you've often heard me say, is that these meditations

• 1:02Dan Harris?

  help you pound the wisdom from the podcast into your neurons in an abiding way. Kaira has been creating those meditations all month. I'm really grateful to her for making all those meditations. And I'm very happy to announce that this is really going to become a permanent part of our workflow. We were experimenting with it for the past few months, but now we're really just going to make it a thing we do. So if you're a paying subscriber, you'll get guided meditations to come with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes. And that's not all. As you know, or as you may know, I've been doing live guided meditations a couple of times a month, once a month, twice a month, for the last 11 months or so. And they've been really fun, lots of great attendance and lots of great responses. So

• 1:44Dan Harris?

  we're now going to do them every week, starting Tuesday afternoon, September 2, at 4 o'clock Eastern. That'll be the first of our weekly sits. We're now going to do them every Tuesday at 4 o'clock Eastern. And the first one will be with me and Vinnie Ferraro, who will be our Teacher of the Month in September. And so every Tuesday at 4 o'clock, either I will be doing a live guided meditation, or the Teacher of the Month will be doing it, or both of us. This is something I've wanted to Do for a long time to create a real community. I think this is an aspect of the Dharma. In Buddhist terms, we call community a sangha. This is an aspect of the Dharma or meditation that is underemphasized in the West. And so I want to do my little part to remedy that. So come join the party.

• 2:27Dan Harris?

  Speaking of parties, I'm going to be doing another I R L event, an in-person event, which we call Meditation Party. It's an in-person workshop at the Omega Institute. We're doing it October 24th through 26th. My friends, Sabine Selassie and Jeff Warren will be teaching it with me. Also, for the first time, Afosu Jones-Cortez, another great meditation teacher. Sign up at E Omega dot org. You can find a direct link in the show notes. All right, we'll be right back with Kaira Jewel-Lingo in conversation with our executive producer, DJ Kazimir.

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• 3:57Speaker 03

  Kyra Jewell-Lingo, welcome back again.

• 4:00Speaker 04

  Thank you. Good to be here.

• 4:02Speaker 03

  It's good to have you. I was spending some time this week looking at the notes we receive from our listeners and from our subscribers over on DanHarris.com. You know, we do these Ask Me Anythings pretty regularly where Dan takes listener questions. And so we've got this trove of months and months and months of questions. And one of the ones that I just saw coming up again and again, week after week after month after month, was this question of What do we do in terms of our meditation practice when we're in the middle of really tough emotions? Like, high levels of anxiety, or deep grief,

• 4:46Speaker 03

  or just in a period where, you know, a very close relative or a child is horribly ill? And this is a, yeah, there's a question that we get a lot. And so I wanted to put it to you and see what you had to say about it.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, thank you. I think it's important to not expect ourselves to be able to settle in meditation the way we would in a different context, to really soften expectations about what practice looks like in times of grief, in times of real overwhelm. And it can look many different ways. One of the things I've found really helpful in moments like that is to do walking meditation, and if I can, to be outside, right? Now it's summertime in the northern hemisphere, taking time to walk, and walk in mindfulness,

• 5:43Speaker 04

  to be in touch with the beauty, to hear all the different species around us, to connect to the earth. I think there are times when, you know, what we're experiencing is so heavy, or overwhelming, or intense, that we really need a larger field to hold us in. And sitting alone on a cushion, or in a chair, inside, can really not be that supportive, or it can be too much. What we're trying to hold is too much. Putting ourselves in situations where we can sense ourselves maybe releasing some of that, or allowing the earth, the tree, the sky, to carry it with us,

• 6:25Speaker 04

  so that we're not alone, holding it, can be helpful. And just the practice of walking, moving with the grief, moving with the overwhelm, can also, maybe sometimes, be a more skillful approach than trying to sit still with something that feels really hard. But that rhythmic placing one soul of the foot on the ground, and then the other, and feeling the breath, and feeling the weight of the body, and being met by the earth with each step. Can offer a different kind of experience of being held or of being able to focus on what's happening in the present moment than maybe sitting.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  And I also would just say that whatever we can do to be in loving community, whether it's a spiritual community, maybe a grief group, or you know, a group of people that are exploring anxiety or overwhelmed together in a mindful, intentional way, or just a spiritual group that just comes together to practice. I think sometimes, you know, it's different for everyone. None of these things are an answer in all cases, but I think part of the pain of these experiences is that we can feel so alone with them. And so whatever we can do to be in community,

• 7:54Speaker 04

  whether it's in community of people going through what we're going through, or just in a mindful, loving, grounded community. Because in those situations, our nervous systems are dysregulated often. And if we can be around others who have stability, who have calm, who have access, right, to presence, that can help reset our nervous systems. Because our nervous systems are not separate, right? There's a collective energy that can help us shift our personal, individual energy. Guided meditations can be very helpful in times like this. It may be that you find your way better in the silence, but if your mind is really loud

• 8:40Speaker 04

  or something is just really overwhelming, it could be helpful to have someone else guiding you. And so just something where you could lie back and open up to what's above you and just feel the earth holding you and be guided to release and to let go and to be there for. Those are just things that arise as ways to support ourselves and maybe just let go of.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Meditating in this time has to look like this. You might find swimming is your meditation in this time. You might find dancing is your meditation in this time. You might find crying while you hold a tree is your meditation. So I think it's just so important to not judge ourselves. Oh, I can't meditate right now. That that's okay. There are other ways that you can support yourself and come back to the present. If if it's just too much to sit, you know, in a still posture, if the grief or the anxiety is too much.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  I mean, just to say, there's such an expansive and practical answer. There's so much in there from not expecting the same thing of yourself that you might in a calmer moment to walking meditation, especially outside, practicing in community, practicing lying down, deep relaxation, guided relaxation, to zooming out even further on what meditation could even mean, swimming, dancing. I really appreciate that. And it's you said something in there about how we we may want to try letting go of the idea that meditation needs to look like this right now. And this is a this is a thread that I see in so many of the questions we get, and I see it in my own mind, too. There's this

• 10:34Speaker 03

  there's this running self-assessment. Is this the thing? Am I doing the thing? Am I doing it right? I've definitely had moments, just in the last few weeks, where I'm having some big emotion, like, I should sit. I can't sit. And then it's like this binary thing where I'm like, I guess I'm not going to practice then. And I just appreciate you sort of pushing us away from this idea that, you know, there's one lane and you get a gold star if you do it that way. It's just a much more expansive view of what the point of all of this even even is.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's such a good.

• 11:11Speaker 04

  Articulation that you name that because you say, I guess I'm not going to sit that you assume, so I can't practice with this. And that's two very different things.

• 11:21Speaker 03

  But when you say it, that's obvious. Yes, they are different things.

• 11:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that really, yeah, what you say, it's like, the point is to be there for ourselves in these times, in whatever way that looks, whatever way we can be there for ourselves, right? Because walking, or dancing, or sitting with someone and holding their hands as we pour out our difficulty, that's being there for ourselves. It's not exactly the same as the way we would be there for ourselves on the cushion. But you can sit on the cushion and not be there for yourself also. That posture doesn't mean X, Y, and Z is happening. So wherever you can find, you know, and for some people, it may be sitting shorter

• 12:10Speaker 04

  for a few minutes, just to even take the posture to just say, I'm going to be here for myself for 10 breaths. You know, I'm not going to ask more of myself than that. Or, you know, maybe, maybe for some people, sitting through the discomfort of, I can't get my mind to calm. This is, nothing's happening here. I hate this. But then you sit there for long enough, and things do start to settle. I mean, for some people, paradoxically, it may be sitting an hour is what helps. Maybe it's after that 30 minute threshold that something starts to settle. That's definitely happened for me, where I've been like, nothing's happening. This is terrible. And then, out of nowhere, some calm settles.

• 12:53Speaker 04

  So it's mysterious. It's hard to say, you know, how it will be for anyone in any given practice period. But, but really, the point is to be there for ourselves, however we are, and in whatever way we can access that. But certainly, all the indigenous wisdom says that when we are in grief, when we are in times of overwhelm, we really need other people. That's, we're not meant to go through those experiences alone.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  Or other beings, like just to open ourselves up to, you know, the benevolence of the world around us. And I know many people might disagree with that characterization, but this sense of connection, this interwovenness that just is our reality, tapping into that. So if we don't have people around us, but if we have, you know, this sense of sitting somewhere and just feeling, you know, the tree's shade is a kind of love, the bird's song is a kind of solidarity, you know, the clouds doing their thing in the sky is a kind of, it's a source of nourishment for

• 14:13Speaker 04

  us that we can really turn towards when we feel really adrift or bereft.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  One last question. As I'm listening to you talk, I'm reminded of a conversation we had on the pod a couple of weeks ago. And there's this thing that you do where you're both deeply compassionate and there's like a soothing element, but there's also a real pushing happening too. Like what I'm hearing from you is both that we can expand what we think it means to take care of ourselves, that we can be gentler with ourselves, and that we actually have to work harder at listening to ourselves and trusting ourselves and opening ourselves up to other

• 15:04Speaker 03

  people. And so there's this way in which if I'm not listening too closely, it all sounds really comforting and easy. And it sort of is and it isn't. Like there's a real sort of against the stream pressure in what you're saying too. And I guess I just want to acknowledge or see if this lands for you that like, this whole thing of opening ourselves up to other people, or even just listening to ourselves, really hard.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Anyway, does that, does that make any sense?

• 15:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally, totally. And, and it is really hard and we are, it is going against the stream because all the things around us that are reflecting back to us are saying, "Check out and you could do this all by yourself. You don't need other people." I mean, that's what so much of our, our consumer culture is, is saying, Western culture, you know, just the whole individualism. So it's a huge thing and it's very vulnerable to open ourselves up to anything that's not our habit and our, our personality. But to, to really, you know, lean on someone, let ourselves lean on it

• 16:19Speaker 04

  and risk the possibility of not being met. Or to open up to this possibility of, of real intelligence in other species and other life forms that are, that may really be as interested in us as we can get interested in them. We're not taught to think that way, but there is real healing. You know, I've, I've just finished a book called Raising Hair, Chloé Dalton in the UK. It's all about this experience she had in the pandemic of meeting this leveret, this tiny baby hare and rescuing it, not to tame it or domesticate it, but just to save its life. And anyway, it's all about their relationship and how that hare

• 17:02Speaker 04

  decided to live of its own accord, partly in her house and partly in the wild. And it's a really beautiful story memoir, but it, the impact of the hare on this woman was, was incredible. And I just think about all the ways that many species around us are ready to instruct us if we will listen. And it takes a real slowing down and a different way of orienting to be able to open to that. But there's so much healing. I mean, this woman totally changed her life because of the hare.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  I want to thank you again for joining us. As I was listening to you, I was reminded of something. Larry Ward, who's also a student of Thich Nhat Hanh, like you, he was recounting a way someone had described Thich Nhat Hanh years ago. I don't remember who the person was, so this is like third-hand at this point, but the description was that Thich Nhat Hanh had the serenity of a cloud and the force of a Mack truck. And there's something about that that I feel like lives on in you in some way that I feel like I'm hearing of these answers. And I just, yeah, I really appreciate you. Thank you.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Thank you so much, DJ. That's a compliment.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  All right. Thanks for doing this. We'll talk again soon.

• 18:22Speaker 04

  Okay, thank you.

• 18:27Dan Harris?

  Thank you to Kaira Jewel and also DJ. Don't forget, you can join me for an in-person meditation party at the Omega Institute. It's October 24th through the 26th. You can find a link in the show notes, or just go to eomega.org. And for year-round practice, remember to sign up at danharris.com. It's your gateway to exclusive companion meditations that come with all of our Monday, Wednesday episodes, and now, weekly live guided meditation sessions on video, which we'll be launching on September 2nd. Finally, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa

• 19:10Dan Harris?

  Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.